decadence
by thirdmetaphor
Summary: A shinobi's age is measured not by how long he's lived, but how much time he has left. KisaIta, not AU.


**decadence**

I've noticed that most KisaIta fics are AU, probably because it seems difficult to write them in universe. Challenge accepted.

**Warnings **– Hints of MadaIta, which some of you may find rather disturbing, but this was written before I discovered that Madara actually aged, and was not just immortal. Thanks for being two hundred, you sexy bastard.

* * *

-0-

There was once a girl from Kiri who tried him on. A young thing, blinded by the thoughts of enticing a strange, blue-skinned man, drawing him in with her smile. They were together once – just once – in a rough inn by the sea where he could taste the remains of slick sea salt on her red, red skin. Her grave rests a little farther from the others at the edge of its cliff.

It's his fleeting attempt to mock her.

.

-1-

So when he sees Uchiha Itachi, all lean sinew and dark eyes and rigid stance, he thinks of her. Itachi is startlingly similar. He wears the same aristocratic cheekbones that would snap easily under pale blue hands, the same gathered hair easy to slice and run his fingers through its silky texture, but it's the look on his face that does him. His look is a carefully applied nonchalance that masks an underlying layer of innocence, and it's there like a gift for the taking.

"Hoshigaki Kisame," a grin, a sharp-fingered hand on a lean shoulder, digging into skin and drawing red to its unmarred surface. "Let's get along well, Itachi-san."

"Of course," Itachi says from behind him.

A flock of black birds rises into the air and Kisame turns back, annoyance and interest crushed together into the same wavering smile. So this one wouldn't allow him near. Madara-sama had outdone himself.

.

-2-

"He's sharp," the man remarks to him later on as they stand at the edge of Ame's lake under the rain. "Keep him close."

"I've figured him out, Madara-sama. It will only take one blow to bring down your Uchiha Itachi." Kisame stands a few feet behind, observing him with Samehada slung over one shoulder.

But Madara's gunbai rests by his heel, and his eyes are fire as he speaks, "The question, then, is what it will take to land that blow."

.

-3-

In the beginning, Itachi is a strange partner to have, a quiet kid that lingers behind him whenever he turns and doesn't speak nearly as much as he observes, and when he does it's infuriatingly monosyllabic. Kisame has known him for three months. He has yet to see the red of the Sharingan.

They rest in a desolate inn room at the borders of Tsuchi, and he watches as the boy slowly unpacks his few possessions onto his bed. Sturdy bandages, a single ration bar, a spare tie for his hair, nothing of the sentimental paraphernalia that a kid his age could be expected to have. The wrap of bandages is somewhat tangled and he tries to loosen them with his slight fingers.

"Itachi-san, we must leave soon. Where is your cloak?"

"It's under the bed."

Kisame tilts his head to one side and leans against the doorframe. "Under the bed? Why is it there?" He must speak plainly with this boy, because Itachi-san is fourteen years old and kids his age are simple-minded fools. Powerful kids his age are merely simple-minded fools who are skilled at killing.

Itachi glances blankly his way, "because the people who come to clean our rooms while we were away would have seen it, if I left it out."

He can't help but release a delighted grin. It inches maybe too far on either side of his face. "Ashamed, Itachi-san? We are almost in Tsuchi. You will wear the cloak openly, there. The Akatsuki is welcomed."

But the boy merely shakes his head and continues to untangle his pile of spare bandages.

.

-4-

The Jinchuuriki of the Yonbi is an aggravating victim. The second time he evades capture, it is Kisame's blood that stains the stone of the cliff top. He blanks out momentarily but comes crashing back to consciousness when a set of lean arms pull him upright, and drag him into the safety of a cave nearby. For a second before opening his eyes, he can feel thin fingers laced between his own.

"Hold still. I need to bandage this," Itachi looks uninterestedly at the wounds over Kisame's chest, bandages held loosely in one hand as if he's not sure what to do with them. After a while, he manages to loosen a space under his back and methodically slips each strand over.

"Have you done this before?" Kisame looks down, ignoring the pain in favor of watching Itachi's curiously close face.

"My brother had scrapes often."

"The one you forgot to kill?" Another grin.

Without pause, "yes, that one."

Itachi is silent as he bandages the wound and staunches the bleeding. Kisame watches him unwaveringly, and manages to catch a single touch of interest in his eyes. That's more than enough to incriminate.

"Aren't you going to ask?"

"You will answer even if I don't."

Kisame chuckles. "It's part of my bloodline, this color. It comes with being able to breathe underwater. But it doesn't do anything. Useless, except maybe for intimidation."

Itachi remains silent, but the question doesn't fade.

A harsher laugh. "Yes, it goes all the way down, Itachi-san."

He nods quickly and finishes wrapping the wound, carefully tucking away the unused bandages as if he already expects to need them again.

"You can leave this Yonbi in my care," he says finally. "I will retrieve him."

But Kisame's hand grasps his arm and for the first time he does not burst into those damned birds. His bones are thin, lithe under the oversized Akatsuki cloak. They would snap with only a little more pressure. "No. Remain here. I don't like it when people steal my prey. I will bring him myself."

The boy nods. He settles back against the wall of the cave and watches uninterestedly as his partner rises to hunt once again.

.

-5-

Itachi does not say many words, nor does he fight many battles.

The first time he does is a year later, when they stand in one of Iwa's great temples, faced with the Tsuchikage's former student. In this temple, Uchiha Itachi is silent intimidation, furtive glances, and a lumbering kind of power that never raises its head unless promised work that is silent and efficient. So far he has watched with intrinsically observant eyes, and now he starts to etch his own mark on the world.

But genjutsu is a wry trick, a sheet of answers thrust into a shinobi's hands. Kisame has always believed this until he sees it reduce Deidara of Iwa to a look of awe.

"You've lost," Itachi tells him. "You are now part of the Akatsuki. You will come with us, and we will take you to our leader."

Deidara nods mutely, allows the genjutsu to fall away, and stares mournfully at his strange, strange hands. Kisame looks from him to his partner. He notes the subtle hints of hierarchy that had been so effortlessly established, and he watches the boy with a mocking smile, knowing that Itachi is at his prime.

From this exalted height, he can only begin to fall.

.

-6-

"Stay still."

"You aren't doing that properly. It's too loose. The bandage needs to be tighter to stop the wound from reopening."

"Maybe if you didn't take a claw to your stomach, you could do this yourself."

"It was a single moment of absentmindedness."

"You should have known better than to go after Sanbi while ill, Itachi-san."

Kisame grins as another pull of the bandage draws a pained hiss from the writhing form under his hands. The boy is fifteen now, and thinks he can take the world. He must be shown his limit.

But Itachi is ill more often, almost once every month. In his illness he is pale and brittle and deceptively fragile, but he walks with the same upright pride as someone in full health. It is clear that he borrows his strength from the seconds of his life. "Any closer and it would have gotten to the village. We could have been found out."

Another sharp grin. Another tug at the white cloth that presses the blood against his body. That will not do, the lie. What guides him is not reason but a fierce protectiveness (not of the village-people, but of _something_) that leaks into the shadows of others. But where has it started? How could one of Madara-sama's kin possibly feel such a thing?

"So?" Kisame ties the ends, and watches as Itachi pushes himself up to his elbows, like a corpse rising from misinterpreted sleep. "Who was it that you wanted to protect? A lover? No, you killed her. Parents? Killed them too, wasn't it? The village itself? You betrayed them. But, a brother, maybe?" He will draw out Itachi's secrets, even if he must pull them from a grave.

The boy (no longer a boy, but Kisame will always think of him as one) doesn't respond. He reaches up to grasp a branch for support as he eases his cloak back onto his body, and then walks away into the cloud-lumbered evening.

.

-7-

Unlike the others, this one is hesitant to kill. Kisame conjectures that maybe he's already filled the quota of bloodlust that every one of them seems to begin with, and is merely tired of death. That could be why he leaves more lives behind than any other in their organization. But that never explains why he holds out his hand and draws even Samehada back with unconcealed strength.

"No need," he says sharply as the civilian man cowers before them, shaking back pressed to the wall of the Kaminari building. "He didn't see."

Kisame gestures at his cloak. "He's seen quite a lot now."

But it's too late, because the half-dead man is already stumbling away with a mix of fear and gratitude in his eyes, and Itachi stands before his retreating form, again protectively. He waits until they're alone in the quiet alley and then turns to stare unblinkingly into his Akatsuki partner's eyes.

"What does it mean to you, when you kill?" Itachi asks softly, as if undecided on whether he wants to be heard or answered. The building's rafters filter the evening sun above and paint a square of light on his face. "What do you think about? Do you see the man as he is, standing before you? Or as he was, before he ever had the misfortune to meet you?"

He isn't sure what to say. Not because he has no answer, but because Itachi has never spoken this much to him all at once.

.

-8-

It takes two years for Kisame to notice.

Typical, that Itachi could be so abnormal yet ordinary at the same time. A kid with the mind of an old man who seeks nothing but self-assurance, maybe at the hands of the only person he's allowed near him for the past five years. It's a fickle kind of innocence. Uncharacteristic of him.

But he's resisted his own childishness while still a child and now he's seventeen and a child no longer. Maybe this is the retaliation of his liberty, resurfacing after being held down so long under the waters of duty.

So they stand at the edge of that familiar cliff, overlooking Kirigakure's green sea. Overhead the gulls cry out their mocking song and the dirt under Kisame's feet is slightly lifted. He pats it with Samehada. The thump of cloth against dirt echoes through the high peaks.

"Why are we here?" Itachi asks uninterestedly. "We have an assignment. This is nowhere along the route."

"Ah, but some of us are more sentimental than you, Itachi-san," Kisame turns to give him an amused look. "Not everyone can be as perfectly emotionless as Pein-sama wishes, like you are. The rest of us need our moments."

Itachi easily picks out the underlying hints of mockery. But his brows are knitted, because only now does he notice the raised section of dirt, just a little above the rest of the ground. "Is something buried under there?"

"An old teammate of mine," he replies easily. _Patpatpat_with Samehada, who smells the lingering remnants of chakra in the dead body underneath and cries for it inside his bandages. "She died during a mission. She was an interesting girl." He can vaguely remember long, dark hair that once glimmered brown in the noon sun, just as Itachi's does now.

"You had a relationship with this person," Itachi observes stiffly. "You came to see her grave."

"Sure," he chuckles. "I had a relationship with her, if you can call it that. A single night and a mission the next day isn't much. But I didn't come to see her grave. I was the one who killed her, after all, and I wouldn't burden myself with ghosts like that. I came to show _you _her grave, Itachi-san."

"Why?"

"Because you're still a kid. That's why."

The boy remains silent. Not a hint of distress. Kisame steps off the lonely grave and moves away, allowing Itachi his silence as he stands before it. The harsh, salty sea wind whips his hair across his neck as he watches the raised earth.

That night, he sleeps a heavy sleep. But he dreams of slight fingers skimming idly over his arm in the darkness.

.

-9-

Itachi changes quickly but gradually. Once, he was a humble boy, a child who trailed along with one small hand fisted into the cloak of legends.

Now he is the embodiment of power.

Kisame sees this keenly as he stands above the small Mizu village and watches it burn under the black flames of the Sharingan, watches another stroke of light fade from Itachi's eyes.

He will watch.

.

-10-

"I must leave. To see my brother."

A rough laugh. "So you'll finally go and steal his eyes, and I won't need to guide you along when you turn blind."

He frowns. "I am not nearly as far gone as you think. I can see just as well as you can."

They rest in another inn room, this time by the borders of Hi. The Uchiha hideout, where Itachi has deemed to meet his brother, is only a few hours away. His things are packed into his cloak, but his breathing is rough, stilted, slowly worsening.

Kisame leans against the doorframe and watches. The first time they were like this, years ago, he carried bandages and ration bars and another hair tie. Now, there are only bandages. He coughs into them when he needs to.

When he does, the scent is maddening.

"When will you leave, Itachi-san?"

"Tonight." The word is said with startling finality, and Kisame notes that he doesn't expect to return.

"Well, do it quickly, or our next assignment will be delayed."

.

-x-

But _tonight _he is far worse than before. When Kisame hears the wracking cough and returns to the inn hours later under the light of the midsummer moon, the metallic stench is overpowering.

Itachi is bent over the bed, bandages discarded, slippery with blood as he holds his fever in and crushes down his weakness until it festers in silence inside. He presses his pale hands to his mouth and coughs weakly, three times. Once great, now fated to be consumed by the slow fire of decadence.

Kisame chooses this moment to pull him in, push his hands away, and press their mouths together while the blood is still there. It's not a smooth kiss, but it still heats up the room. He finds himself with one knee on the bed, wrinkling the rough sheets. His hands slide across the almost translucent skin that responds willingly to his touch.

Against him, Itachi –now almost twenty, but still a boy – is a quiet desperation. He grasps onto Kisame's cloak with still-slippery fingers and pulls him in, molding their lips together until it's thoroughly unforgettable, and neither of them will be able to deny that it happened. Kisame smiles into his mouth because he doesn't plan to deny. He cannot kill this boy if he plans to walk so willingly to his own death. He can only try to warm him temporarily with a palm cupping his lithe shoulder, and the smell of the sea that's never left him.

When he pulls away, Itachi looks at him strangely. He raises a finger to his own mouth and wipes at the outlines of red. "Why now?"

Kisame catches his finger and pulls it away. He lets his own hand trail the same path. "Why not?"

"You once told me I was too young for it."

A chuckle. "But a shinobi's age is measured only by the duration of his life, isn't it?"

Brief silence lingers between them. "Madara-sama would not like this."

"I knew he'd already had his turn."

"But it's fine." _I like it. _Itachi's hands are still slick, still tinted with his sickness. But somehow the longing from before surfaces once again. It's strong, resilient, even after being destroyed by the sight of a raised grave. "But this is all we can do."

The same grin, one last time. "It's all I want, Itachi-san."

* * *

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